Tag Archives: astronauts

Conspiracists who believe the moon landings were faked like to claim the astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt (http://tinyurl.com/p7khram).

It was 1962 and American John Glenn was orbiting the Earth in Friendship 7, his capsule on the Mercury-Atlas 6 flight. Ground controllers were mystified at Glenn’s report of fireflies outside his window, strange bright specks that clustered about his ship. The first thought was that they must be ice crystals from Friendship 7’s hydrogen peroxide attitude control rockets, but Glenn was unable to correlate their appearance with the use of the rockets. Astronauts on later flights reported similar bright specks, and eventually we learned enough about the space environment to identify what they were. Spacecraft tend to accumulate clouds of debris and contamination around themselves, and even though Glenn’s rockets sprayed jets of crystals away from the capsule, many of the crystals would gather in this contamination cloud, where they reflected sunlight and interacted with other gases in the cloud. Experiments on board Skylab in the 1970’s using quartz-crystal microbalances confirmed and further characterized this phenomenon. The case of John Glenn’s mysterious fireflies was solved.

The Apollo 16 “flying saucer”, compared with a view of the spolight boom from a different missionPhoto credit: NASA

The stories of our humble explorations of the space around our planet tell of courage, danger, and adventure. But do they conceal another element as well? For as long as humans have had space programs, there have been darker tales flying alongside: tales of mysterious UFOs, apparently alien spacecraft monitoring our progress. These stories come from the early days of the Soviet launches, from the Mercury program, the Gemini program, the space shuttle flights, and perhaps most infamously from the Apollo flights to the moon.

Like pilots, astronauts are often given something of a pass whenever they report a UFO, a pass that presumes it’s impossible for someone with flight training to misidentify anything they see in the sky. Most famously, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, has long maintained that most UFOs are alien spacecraft and that the government is covering up its ongoing active relations with alien cultures. Coming from a real astronaut, Mitchell’s views are often quite convincing to the public.

NASA’s reaction to Mitchell was anticlimactic, but highlighted that their business is launching things into space, not studying UFO reports . . .

Ancient aliens is the idea that aliens visited earth in the past. The idea of ancient aliens is not a new one either. Imagination is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s evolutionary struggle for survival. As a race, we are hardwired to consider important concepts, such as the creation of life on Earth and the history of people on this planet. At some point, we are all presented with various explanations and theories regarding the expansion of human life on Earth. In the long history of mankind, the majority of these concepts have followed religious teachings, and the power of a spiritual God or Gods. In modern times, many people have come to challenge these claims.

The idea of evolution has been used to describe the gradual change of traits that living organisms undergo over time, which is related to the environment, but it doesn’t explain how the biological cells of human’s first ancestor were spawned. Because of the fact that everyone is interested in the creation of life on Earth, and concurrently we have been taught to believe in the power of religion and the impossibility of alien life, the idea that this article will be examining is controversial. It will be based around some concepts that have been labeled absurd by the scientific community, but let your imagination go, and have some fun with the list.

10 • Ancient Aliens

The idea surrounding ancient aliens is a basic one. It states that the human population was influenced by a group of extraterrestrials that visited Earth in the past. The ancient aliens were directly involved in the evolution of primates, including humans. It has been suggested that this was accomplished by way of genetic engineering, cross-breeding, or a combination of both, ultimately helping in the development of human cultures, technologies and religion. The idea first gained widespread exposure with the 1968 publication of Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, but the concept has been around since the middle of the 19th century. A common variant of the idea includes proposals that deities from most, if not all, religions, including angels and demons, are actually extraterrestrials whose advanced technologies were taken by people as evidence of a divine status.

This concept is related to the religious practice of a cargo cult, which can be seen in modern day pre-industrial tribal societies. Especially during World War II, when indigenous people were contacted by soldiers with advanced equipment, such as guns and tanks. The cults subsequently attempted to obtain wealth through magic and religious rituals and practices. The ancient alien theory states that extraterrestrials purposely tricked the human population into believing they were Gods, creating religion to help people evolve more efficiently. The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

It has been proposed that, with the current age of the universe and its vast number of stars, if the Earth was typical, extraterrestrial life should be common. In response to this paradox, the zoo hypothesis has been suggested. It states that aliens generally avoid making their presence known to humanity, or avoid exerting an influence on development, somewhat akin to zookeepers observing animals in a zoo, or experimental scientists observing a study of life. Adherents of the hypothesis feel that the Earth and humans are being secretly surveyed using equipment located on Earth, or elsewhere in the Solar System. Charles Fort’s unpublished 1915 manuscript, novel X, describes how Martian beings or Martian events control life on Earth. Fort ultimately burnt the manuscript, but one surviving quote from it is “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

9 • Angels and Demons

The idea of ancient alien as astronauts has spawned a UFO religion named Raëlism. The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of the Elohim appeared human and were mistaken for angels, cherubim or gods. The Bible is full of accounts of angels and demons. The text mentions millions of angels and their experiences on Earth and in the heavens. In Christian tradition, demons are similar to angels. They are spiritual, immutable and immortal. The individual demon owns a specific knowledge, sometimes on only one subject. The apocryphal Book of Enoch recounts that a group of 200 rebellious angels, or Watchers, left heaven and came down to Earth to marry human women and have children with them.

The Quran depicts a story of angels that are given minds of their own, found in verse [2:34]. One of the angels was Iblis (Satan/Lucifer), who rebelled and was therefore banished on earth to create mischief amongst mankind. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, angels were all created as good beings, but some decided to become evil. It was written that angels do not need faith as they already have the knowledge of celestial things, which means that their action constitutes unforgivable sin. The idea of alien intervention on Earth can be found in the modern religious philosophy of Thelema. Thelema was developed by the early 20th century British writer, Aleister Crowley.

Crowley’s system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law, which he claims was a direct dictation from an entity named Aiwass. Crowley later identified Aiwass as his own Holy Guardian Angel. The religion is founded upon the idea that the 20th century marked the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, in which a new ethical code would be followed; “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The famed American rocket propulsion researcher, Jack Parsons, was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Parsons research into rocket propulsion was some of the earliest in United States history. His pioneering work in the development of solid fuel, and the invention of Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity’s space age. The work of Parsons and his peers helped people usher in the age of space travel. Jack Parsons was largely self-educated.

8 • Men in Black

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the theory that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets. The idea sounds simple to modern day humans, but it a relatively new concept that originated out of the saucer sightings and close encounters of the 1940s-1960s. Thousands of UFO sightings have been reported in the last 50 years, and one of the emerging themes in these events is the Men in Black. The Men in Black are men, or aliens, dressed in black suits who have been reported to harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. In most cases, the men claim to be government agents, but it is often suggested that they may be ancient aliens themselves.

People who have reported an encounter with the Men in Black often describe them as men of short stature with a deeply tanned and dark complexion. According to the accounts, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the person they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time. They have been described as seeming confused by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using outdated slang. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described do not exist or have been dead for some time. Another defining characteristic of the Men in Black is wide grins and disconcerting giggles.

The phenomenon has been frequently reported since the 1950s and 1960s, but some researchers, including John Keel and others, have suggested similarities between the Men in Black reports and earlier demonic accounts. Keel suggests that the beings are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that was earlier interpreted as the devil, or encounters with fairies. The term “the black man” has been used for centuries in reference to the Devil. In history, the Black Man was often reported as meeting with the accused and having sexual intercourse with them. Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is another folk name for The Devil that is used in the local legends of New England and pre-Civil War America.

During the Middle Ages, the black man was not a person with African features, but rather a man colored black and dressed in black. In modern times, another phenomenon known as the Grinning Man has become associated with the Men in Black, and various reports of paranormal activity. These creatures are larger and characterized by a wide grinning face. In most cases, people describe a strange sensation of not being able to focus in on the Grinning Man. It has been suggested that the smile is an attempt by the aliens to conform to society and keep humans feeling safe, but in all reports the figure is described as extremely creepy. In the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games, there is a mysterious character named G-Man that parallels some of the Men in Black descriptions.